07 August 2013

On est où, là ?

I know it happens to people who go on traveling and take a lot of photos. It's happened to me. Afterwards, you look at the photos, and you ask yourself: "Now what town, what village, what château, what church is this?"

So tell me where I took these pictures? There are obviously steep hills.

There's a big church at the end of a pedestrian street.

There's a garden up on a hill, and a river with a bridge.

Is that another town on the other side of the bridge, or more of the same town?

And there's another big church — one with several very tall, pointy towers.

It is Blois, as Simon and Antoinette said. Walt and I were up there on July 24, when I was on my way to Paris. My train was canceled, so we had nearly three hours to kill before the next one left. Time for a good lunch in a restaurant and a long walk around the olde towne. Now we are discussing the possibility of relocating ourselves to Blois one day.

Well, Simon beat everybody to the answer, but I thought immediately of Blois and the time you picked Norma and me up at the train station there, did a little walking tour, and had a nice lunch before heading down to Saint-Aignan. Tell me, is Blois considered part of "la France profonde" or is it too mainstream for such a designation?

Hi Bob, I'm not sure I'd call Blois 'La France Profonde' but the 'département' it presides over, le Loir-et-Cher, is definitely rural and provincial. The mayor of Blois for many years, 'parachuted' in, was the Socialist 'éléphant' Jack Lang, minister of culture under Pres. Mitterrand back in the '80s. That marks and changes a town (Blois is just barely a city). Blois also has a gigantic ZUP -- Zone à Urbaniser par Priorité -- or housing project ('grands ensembles' or apartment complexes) full of people who have immigrated from Africa, Asia, and all over the world. That population makes the town fairly cosmopolitain, in a third-world kind of way.

Jean, if the weather cooperates, late August or early September would be a good time for a walk around Blois. The château is interesting too, including a painting in the chapel there by CHM's grandfather.